Recent political events confirm a hypothesis I’ve put forth for several years: leaders and their ideologies function to allow shared fantasies to become externalized into social reality. The leader's words contain and convey fantasies or desires that followers seek to enact.

I’ve developed a method that allows one to ascertain the precise nature of these fantasies and desires. Below are excerpts from two online publications—and links to complete papers. Hope you’ll take the time to read them.

“The leader brings forth—makes manifest—ideas and desires that had been latent within a culture. His ideology reveals and crystallizes a people's shared fantasies. The leader processes his own fantasies and those of his people and "returns" information to his audience—in the form of a societal discourse. By virtue of being transformed into an ideology, energies and passions bound to shared fantasies are released for action. The ideology transforms latent desires and fantasies into the collective will to act. The will to act is generated by the wish to actualize or bring into reality the fantasy contained within the ideology.”

“Politicians articulate their own emotions and fantasies through the vehicle of the ideas that they put forth upon the public stage. If a politician is to become successful, the ideas he conveys must resonate with the populace. The leader's words must evoke emotions and fantasies within his audience that are not unlike the emotions and fantasies that his words evoke within himself. Ideologies "capture" or harness energy contained with latent desires or fantasies, making this energy available for concerted, societal action.”